How Much for the Child?

Abstract

In this paper we explore what sacrifices you are morally required to make to save a child who is about to die in front of you. It has been argued that you would have very demanding duties to save such a child (or any adult who is in similar circumstance through no fault of their own, for that matter), and some examples have been presented to make this claim seem intuitively correct. Against this, we argue that you do not in general have a moral requirement to bear more than moderate cost to save even a child who is just in front of you. Moreover, we explain why you have a much more demanding moral requirement in certain cases by appealing to the notions of undue risk and cost sharing.

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented as seminars at the Australian National University and Charles Sturt University. We are grateful for comments received from audiences on those occasions, and especially to Stephanie Collins, Bashshar Haydar, Holly Lawford-Smith, Seth Lazar, Alejandra Mancilla, Leif Wenar, Luara Ferracioli and Ole Koksvik for written comments on earlier drafts. This article is part of a larger project on responsibilities to address poverty that has received financial support from the Australian Research Council and the Research Council of Norway.